Conservative media outlets are attacking Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley for purportedly "taxing the rain" as governor of Maryland. But as The Baltimore Sun noted, the state did "not tax the rain." O'Malley approved an anti-pollution levy on certain property owners to comply with federal law protecting the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.

The talking point that O'Malley allegedly "taxed the rain" has been frequently used by conservatives since his presidential announcement. For instance:

During the May 31 edition of Fox & Friends Sunday, co-host Anna Kooiman wondered how O'Malley will "be able to stay relevant especially when he's got these huge -- this record of major taxes, including taxing the rain." Fox News contributor Deneen Borelli later said "there isn't a thing he wouldn't tax."

Richard J. Douglas wrote in a May 31 National Reviewpiece: "Environmental extremism is another O'Malley signature issue. The governor's 'rain tax' (collected on quarterly water bills) made Maryland a national laughingstock. Small businesses weren't laughing, though, when their water bills skyrocketed in 2013. Baltimore's elderly, struggling on fixed incomes and already pressed by crime and collapsing neighborhoods, now face liens thanks to the rain tax."

A June 6 American Thinker piece by Thomas Lifson referred to O'Malley as "the guy who taxed rain."

A June 9 Townhall.com column by Arthur Schaper claimed of O'Malley: "This man taxed the rain - no joke!"

Daniel Greenfield wrote in a June 10 FrontPage Magazine piece that "O'Malley is famous for is taxing the rain as governor" and Democrats "can cast their vote for a man who will tax water falling from the sky ... O'Malley will tax any rain that falls on you." He added that his only support would come from voters who "hate" rain.

Media outlets are baselessly linking an increase in murders in Baltimore and other cities to "increased scrutiny" of police, without noting the legitimate reasons why such scrutiny of local police departments is needed.

Homicides have spiked in the last month in Baltimore, with 43 killings reported in May, the most in one month since 1971 and the highest monthly per capita rate on record, according to TheBaltimore Sun. At the same time, arrests have plummeted, with a WBAL-TV investigation finding arrests have gone down 32 percent since the curfew was lifted, and the Sunreporting arrests in May this year were less than half the number in May last year.

Several right-wing media figures are attributing these numbers to increased scrutiny of police, and this narrative is seeping into mainstream coverage. On the June 1 edition of Fox & Friends, during an interview with author Kevin Jackson, co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle argued that "police are more concerned about their own well-being. They don't want to be arrested or persecuted for just putting on the blue every morning." She added that "when you have individuals like [Baltimore City State's Attorney] Marilyn Mosby going aggressively against the police," this "undermines the ability of law enforcement to keep people in the community safe," linking the increase in homicides to Mosby's decision to charge six Baltimore police officers in connection with the death of Freddie Gray.

On the May 31 edition of Fox & Friends Sunday, National Review Online contributor Heather Mac Donald similarly claimed the U.S. is "in the grips of a hysteria against cops," saying "cops have gotten the message that they should back off of policing." She faulted the "mainstream media, the university presidents talking about assaults on blacks and of course the president and former attorney general." Mac Donald, who has a history of deeply offensive commentary on race, was discussing her recent Wall Street Journalop-ed, in which she argued that the "most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months."

The previous week, National Review editor Rich Lowry also advocated for increased incarceration in response to the spike in violence, and cited anonymous police officers who "say they feel that city authorities don't have their back, understandably enough when city leaders are loath to call rioters 'thugs.'"

And now the Associated Press is adopting the same language. In a May 31 report on Baltimore homicides, the AP stated that "Some attribute the drop [in arrests] to increased scrutiny of police following the April death of Freddie Gray from injuries received in police custody."

Aside from the obvious problem with this argument -- that there is no evidence these feelings attributed to the police have resulted in an increase in murders -- this coverage has also missed a significant reason why people have called for increased scrutiny of police officers since the deaths of men like Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and Freddie Gray: the fact that police killings and police brutality disproportionately affect people of color.

On May 30, the Washington Postreleased a study on police killings, which found that two-thirds of unarmed victims of police shootings were minorities, and "blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred." Their figures represent far greater total than the FBI statistics on police killings, which are "widely considered to be misleading and inaccurate": FBI records show about 400 shootings per year, compared to 385 so far this year in the Post's data. Three of the 385 shootings the Post reported on resulted in the officer being charged, or less than one percent. And over the last several years, the Department of Justice has found that numerous local police departmentshave engaged in a "pattern or practice" of improper discrimination against residents of color, and have disproportionately targeted them for stops and arrests.

Faced with stark numbers like these, any media outlet should feel compelled to at least contextualize claims of a "hysteria against cops" with this evidence of disproportionate police violence against minorities.

The school recently chose to not participate in federal student aid programs, citing a desire to distance itself from the federal government's "influence and control." On the March 29 edition of Fox & Friends Sunday, host Tucker Carlson interviewed the school's president to discuss his institution's decision. President Kevin Roberts explained that the college was avoiding federal provisions that would require the educational establishment to respect basic protections for the LGBT community in the admissions and hiring processes.

Carlson: What are you concerned that the federal government would force you to do against your faith if you continue to take money?

Roberts: Well, as I said, we're a faithful Catholic college, which means that while we love all people and we have charity toward all, we would have problems with admissions and with employment with a transgendered person or someone with a same sex attraction who wanted to be active and an activist with that. And so, in spite of what people think the church may be changing in terms of the beliefs, we believe that in order to maintain church teaching on those principles that we ought not have strings attached to that federal money.

Carlson went on to ask Roberts if the school's move meant the institution could then set its own standards for hiring. Roberts responded saying Wyoming Catholic College would only selectively discriminate in its hiring and admissions processes:

Carlson: So, does this mean, because you're not going to be taking federal money, that you can have any employment standards that you wish?

Roberts: Well, within reason, right? We're not going to discriminate in other ways, but church teaching is very clear that if we were to have, say, a transgendered student want to apply it's not in line with church teaching. It does not mean we hate that person at all. We love them. But it simply doesn't square with the college we have founded in Wyoming.

Fox News pushed three food stamp myths in under five minutes, while hyping new statistics showing that 46.5 million Americans now receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) -- or food stamp -- benefits. Fox ignored the fact that raising the minimum wage would reduce the number of SNAP recipients, that experts agree marriage would not solve problems of poverty, that increasing numbers of college students are food insecure and need this government aid, and that undocumented immigrants are not eligible for SNAP benefits.

Reporter Emily Miller has claimed during recent appearances on Fox News that the United States has not been subject to terrorist shootings like the one at the office of French satire newspaper Charlie Hebdo because private gun ownership in the United States dissuades terrorists from launching attacks.

During the January 11 edition of Fox & Friends Sunday, Miller (the former senior opinion editor of the conservative Washington Times who also contributes columns to FoxNews.com) claimed the reason "terrorists don't come here is because of civilian's ownership" of firearms. Miller continued with the confounding argument that terrorists use bombs but not guns in the United States because of civilian gun ownership:

MILLER: They come here and they bomb us, unfortunately, which is horrible, but they're not coming here with guns because Americans can shoot back.

During a January 12 appearance on Fox & Friends, Miller added, "The Second Amendment is what keeps us safer from terrorist attacks because foreigners know we have guns." (Al Qaeda has actually encouraged its followers to exploit loose gun laws in the United States to get weapons without a background check.)

Miller offered a number of untrue claims about gun violence built upon her false premise that there is no civilian gun ownership in France during her Fox appearances.

Conservative media figures hid statements from President Obama and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio condemning violent protests. Instead, they misleadingly suggested the politicians were to blame for December 20 murder of two New York City police officers by a gunman, who was reportedly retaliating against the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown at the hands of police.

Fox's Clayton Morris: Al Sharpton Is "Calling To Kill Cops"

Fox & Friends Sunday repeatedly spliced footage of Al Sharpton speaking at a Washington, D.C. "Justice for All" march with footage from a separate event in New York City where some in the crowd chanted for "dead cops" to claim Sharpton is "calling to kill cops."

The December 14 edition of Fox & Friends Sunday opened with video from a December 13 march in New York City where some protesters chanted, "What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now." Co-host Anna Kooiman set up the footage by saying, "Thousands march with Al Sharpton against the police," and later promised "more from Sharpton's 'March for Justice.'"

But the footage of protesters chanting anti-police slogans was not from Sharpton's December 13 march, which The Washington Postdescribed as a "peaceful civil rights march led by families of the slain and organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network."

Fox News host and Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson claimed that the government "wants to know" if people have firearms in their houses "because they'd like to disarm you," echoing a common conspiracy theory from gun lobby extremists.

On the August 10 edition of Fox & Friends Sunday, co-host Heather Nauert reported on a mother's effort to lobby the New York state legislature to pass a bill requiring the safe storage of guns in homes, after her son was killed in an accidental shooting at a friend's house. Nauert asked viewers, "when your child goes to another family's house, do you ever think to ask if they have a gun?"

After the report, Carlson said he would be "offended" if a parent asked him about firearms in his home. "If somebody asked me -- the idea that 93 percent of people don't mind if you ask them if they have a firearm at home -- I find that a very private question," said Carlson. "It's something that government wants to know because they'd like to disarm you. But I -- it's something that I'm not comfortable talking about with other people, and I would be offended by that question."

The National Rifle Association frequently -- and falsely -- claims that the government is collecting information about privately-owned firearms in order to confiscate them at a later time. A recent commentary video from the gun group baselessly claimed that "the government is collecting more and more gun registration data which could be used against gun owners in the form of full confiscation," and the NRA's president Jim Porter has claimed that the Obama administration is using Medicare enrollment forms to create a national gun registry even though no questions about guns appear on the form.

Carlson also criticized Nauert's report for suggesting that "guns are scary, gun owners are a threat to you and your children." He said that "far more children died last year drowning in their bathtubs than were killed accidentally by guns" and stated that he "would like to see a package on, do you have a bathtub at home? Because I need to know that before I send my child over to your house."

Carlson also claimed that "the places with the highest levels of gun ownership" are "the safest places," citing Maine, Wyoming, and Vermont as states where "you're not going to get hurt." In fact, as the Huffington Post noted, a Violence Policy Center study that reviewed 2011 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that "States with weak gun-control laws and higher rates of gun ownership tend to have higher rates of gun deaths, while states with stronger policies and fewer gun owners have significantly lower rates of gun-related deaths." Wyoming had the fourth highest rate of gun deaths in the study.

Fox News and Fox Business have continued to host former CIA officer and CBS News analyst Michael Scheuer after he endorsed the assassination of President Obama. Scheuer's latest appearance on the August 1 edition of Fox & Friends suggests his profile on the networks may have escalated in recent months.

Scheuer has a long history of extreme rhetoric and arguably reached his most fevered pitch when he gave his stamp of approval to the idea that Obama, as well as British Prime Minister David Cameron, should be assassinated. Scheuer concluded a December 2013 column with advice for the constituents of Cameron and Obama (emphasis added):

As they head further down the road of losing wars and wrecking Anglo-American liberties, Messrs Obama and Cameron and their supporters in all parties would do well to read the words of the great 17th century English republican Algernon Sidney, a man who was revered on both sides of the Atlantic, who greatly influenced America's founders, and who was executed by the British Crown for what it described as sedition. "There must therefore be a right," Sidney wrote,

"of proceeding judicially or extra-judicially against all persons who transgress the laws; or else those laws, and the societies that should subsist by them, cannot stand; and the ends for which governments are constituted, together with the governments themselves, must be overthrown. ... If he [a political leader] be justly accounted an enemy of all, who injures all; he above all must be the publick enemy of a nation, who by usurping power over them, does the greatest and most publick injury that a people can suffer. For which reason, by an established law among the most virtuous nations, every man might kill a tyrant; and no names are recorded in history with more honor, than of those who did it."

Just 10 days after the column was published, Scheuer appeared on Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight to accuse Hillary Clinton of "effectively murdering" the Americans who died during the 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya. According to a Media Matters search, Scheuer has appeared on Fox Business at least twice since, on Lou Dobbs Tonight June 9 and on Money July 18.

Fox News Channel -- which hosted Scheuer dozens of times before his validation of attempts to assassinate the president -- has continued to invite Scheuer on in recent months. Fox & Friends Sunday invited the former CIA officer on in June, and after having appeared on the weekday edition of Fox & Friends in February,the show invited him back August 1.

60th Anniversary Of School Desegregation Is No Time To Talk About Race, According To Conservative Media

To right-wing media, commencement speeches observing the anniversary of the desegregation of U.S. schools is no time to talk about race in America.

First Lady Michelle Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder each gave commencementaddresses this month marking the 60th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the Supreme Court ruled that state-mandated racial segregation of schools violated the U.S. Constitution.

Speaking to graduating high school seniors in Topeka, Kansas, the first lady referenced racial segregation that still exists today, according to The Kansas City Star:

Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregated schools, Obama reminded the city where the case originated that the country is still racially divided -- although much more subtly than in the 1950s.

"Our laws may no longer separate us based on our skin color, but there's nothing in our constitution that says we have to eat together in the lunchroom or live together in the same neighborhoods," Obama told a full house at the 8,000-seat Kansas Expocentre.

At Morgan State University's commencement, Holder called on graduates to "take account of racial inequality, especially in its less obvious forms, and actively discuss ways to combat it."

Such references were cause for outrage from the right-wing echo chamber, which has frequentlylabeledprominent African-Americans "race hustlers" when they talk about racial issues in America.

Fox contributor and radio host Laura Ingraham attacked Obama's remarks as a "negative, cynical speech" that told kids their family members "were probably racists." Ingraham concluded that Obama was really just "projecting" her own racist beliefs.

The New York Times was forced to issue two corrections after relying on Capitol Hill anonymous sourcing for its flawed report on emails from former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Clinton debacle is the latest example of why the media should be careful when relying on leaks from partisan congressional sources -- this is far from the first time journalists who did have been burned.

Several Fox News figures are attempting to shift partial blame onto Samuel DuBose for his own death at the hands of a Cincinnati police officer during a traffic stop, arguing DuBose should have cooperated with the officer's instructions if he wanted to avoid "danger."

Iowa radio host Steve Deace is frequently interviewed as a political analyst by mainstream media outlets like NPR, MSNBC, and The Hill when they need an insider's perspective on the GOP primary and Iowa political landscape. However, these outlets may not all be aware that Deace gained his insider status in conservative circles by broadcasting full-throated endorsements of extreme right-wing positions on his radio show and writing online columns filled with intolerant views that he never reveals during main stream media appearances.